


the sky is not your limit, merely your beginning

by pawn_vs_player



Series: of feathers and thorns [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Hermione Granger, F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Growing Up, I Blame Tumblr, Language of Flowers, Minister for Magic Hermione Granger, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Parenthood, Pet Names, Sassy Hermione, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 16:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9246434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pawn_vs_player/pseuds/pawn_vs_player
Summary: Let her love carry her above all that which would darken her soul, and let those who would stop her be crushed under her might.Or: Hermione Granger, little girl to Minister of Magic, as told through a series of tattoos.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Blame musicalluna on tumblr, alright, she sent me a message about the tattoo trope in fanfics and I got carried away by the idea of tattooed Hermione. Don't look at me.  
> Also in my defense I wrote this in the span of three hours, which were between 10pm and 1am. I reserve the right to say 'fuck you i'm exhausted' to any negative comments this gets.  
> Edit: second chapter in progress, starring Rose Naledi Weasley. I'm hyped; are you?

Hermione was three when she realized that the pretty colors on her parents' hands weren't normal.

"What are they, mama?" she asked, and her mama picked her up and sat her on her knee and let Hermione trace her little fingers along the intricate band of golden ink on her ring finger. 

"They're called tattoos, _kidege_ ," she said, and flicked the tip of Hermione's nose to make her giggle. "Your father and I wear them on our fingers instead of rings."

"Like the ones Aunt Aisha and Uncle Nathan have?" Hermione asked, and her mama nodded.

"Yes."

 

Hermione was five when she noticed the darker swirls of ink on her mama's back. She stood up on mama's bed and wobbled over to where Mama was hooking her bra and put her palm flat against a larger whorl of black. "What're these, mama?"

"Flowers," her mama said, finishing the hooks with deft fingers and moving to tap at Hermione's head. "Foxglove and impala lily. Your  _bibi_ had a garden behind our house when I was a child, before I came here with your father. I got them painted under my skin so I would never forget them."

"But where are the colors?" Hermione asked, because she'd never seen a black flower before.

Her mama turned, scooping Hermione up into her arms and mussing the little girl's thick curls. "In my memory _._ "

 

Hermione was in her fourth year of school when she met a teacher with tattoos. He was bald and he wore his shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and Hermione could see a skull outlined in bright blue and the tail of a green and purple snake with its head tucked into his elbow winding up under his sleeve, and he had a small purple star on the back of his neck that Hermione liked to stare at when he turned to write on the board.

Hermione's mama laughed and tugged on Hermione's braids when she came home babbling about another person with tattoos. "It's not so rare,  _kidege._ I'm sure you'll meet plenty of people with tattoos."

"But he has one on his  _head,_ mama!" Hermione exclaimed. Her mama smiled and listened dutifully as Hermione chattered away, eyes bright and pencil scratching at her fractions homework. 

 

Hermione was ten when Aunt Aisha and Uncle Nathan, who still lived in Mossel Bay with Hermione's _bibi_ and  _babu_ , came to visit. Hermione had only seen them a handful of times in the past ten years, her grandparents even less. Uncle Nathan swung her around in the air, exclaiming about how much she'd grown, and Aunt Aisha sipped red wine with Hermione's mama and talked about how  _bibi_ and  _babu_ were doing. Her father came home from work late and smiled when he hugged Aunt and Uncle. Hermione listened from the stairs as the adults talked into the night, laughing and drinking slowly. She wasn't supposed to be up, she knew- she had school the next day- but a visit from Aunt Aisha and Uncle Nathan was not to be missed.

"Still got the ink, I see," Uncle said, and Hermione's back straightened. "I'd have thought you could afford real rings by now."

"Nathan!" Aunt snapped. Hermione frowned. Her parents did have real rings, they just weren't metal. Metal rings, Hermione thought, were silly. They pinched at your fingers and you were always susceptible to losing them. Her parents' rings were much more practical.

"We do have real rings," mama said, and Hermione shivered at the chill in her mama's voice. That chill meant extra chores for a week or no library trips. That voice meant consequences. "And I think they're just as good, if not better, than yours. How often do you wear that thing anyway, Nathan? Twice a year? Not much of a show of commitment. Our rings are permanently drawn on our bodies. I can't think of a more visible vow than that."

Hermione smiled as she slipped back up the stairs to bed. Her mama was the best.

 

On Hermione's eleventh birthday, a letter from an address no one recognized was slipped under the door. Her mother read it first and laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that preceded sobs.

"I thought mama was joking," she whispered, and Hermione's dad hugged mama and picked up the letter, and he was pale and frowning. 

"What does it say?" Hermione asked, and her mama shuddered at the question.

 

When Hermione was eleven, a representative from Hogwarts arrived and offered to help Hermione gather the required materials. Mama drew herself up high and demanded to come along, and the wizard- witch, she corrected Hermione kindly- agreed easily.

She tapped a sequence into a brick wall and opened up a new street of shops. Hermione clung to her mama's hand and looked everywhere. She got a wand and robes and so very many  _books,_ and her mama watched her carefully with large, dark eyes.

 

When Hermione was eleven, her mama helped her pack up her things to go to a school for magic.

 

Hermione studied, on the drive back from  _Diagon Alley_ and in her bed and on the drive to the train station and on the train ride itself. (In between was the goodbye at the station, where she took time to hug her mama and her dad, to kiss Mama's cheek and accept her father's adjustment of her heavy braids and push back her tears when her mama leaned down to whisper " _Nakupenda_ _, kidege_ ," into her ear.) 

She shared a compartment with an absent-minded boy named Neville who answered all the questions he could with a friendly smile and questions of his own, about what he called  _Muggles-_ non-magic people. "My parents are dentists," she said, and giggled a little at the bemusement on his face. 

Neville's pet toad disappeared and Hermione helped him look, going into compartments and asking the occupants if they'd seen it. The last one was a pair of boys, one pale and ginger-haired and the other dark-haired with bright green eyes and round spectacles. They blinked at her robes and she wondered for a moment if they were  _Muggle-born_ too, but she was quickly proven wrong.

She rode in their boat across the lake to Hogwarts, and was sorted into  _Gryffindor_ along with them. The Sorting Hat offered her Ravenclaw, for the bright of mind and quick of mouth, and she frowned- she was smart, she knew, and she loved to learn, but she wasn't sure if that was all she wanted to do. The Sorting Hat hemmed and hawed and paused, and then it chuckled and said  _Oh, I see,_ and Hermione asked "What?" and the hat said  _You want to be like your mother, do you? Want to make her proud?_ and Hermione huffed and said "Of course!" and the Sorting Hat reared up on her head and shouted "GRYFFINDOR!", and that was that.

Hermione trudged about alone for a while. This was familiar; no one really wanted to be friends with the girl who read too much and talked too fast and who teachers  _always_ liked just because she was eager to spread knowledge, and it wasn't her fault they called on her. And if they weren't intimidated or put-off by her, they were making fun of her "cotton-ball" hair and her strange dresses and her odd, clicking words that weren't English at all. She was used to solitude at school. 

She wasn't used to being so far from her parents, and it ached like none of the sharp jeers of her peers ever had.

She sat next to the ginger in Charms-  _Weasley_ , Flitwick said- and tried to help him correct his spellcasting, but he only glared and disregarded her, and the ache throbbed in her chest.

No one liked her, no matter how she tried. Even Neville was simply polite, and he was busy with his own problems and his own bullies. Hermione wouldn't trouble him with her own issues; that wouldn't be fair.

A month passed, and she wished for her mama and her dad. She thought of the rings on their fingers and the warm spread of the flowers on mama's back, and she hid her tears in her pillow.

And then she slipped out of the Dining Hall to use the bathroom- okay, to cry, it had been an awful day- and then there was a massive, stinking  _thing_ smashing through the door, and she had enough time to think  _troll_ before it ran its club through the sinks and she screamed.

And then the boys were there, the ginger and the green-eyed one everyone gave strange looks,  _Potter_ she'd heard and  _The Boy Who Lived,_ and  _Potter_ \- who the ginger screamed  _Harry_ at- raised his wand and the troll's club went up into the air without the troll's consent.

The troll fell hard, and Hermione screamed again, but only a little. And the ginger- Weasley,  _Ron Weasley_ \- helped her up, and the green-eyed _Harry_  smiled at her, and suddenly, before she realized it, she had friends.

 

Harry was the Boy Who Lived, apparently, and apparently that came with a Dark Lord Who Shall Not Be Named trying to make him the Boy Who Died.

Hermione sighed, rubbing at her forehead, and kept researching the wizarding wars. Perhaps the boys were willing to jeopardize life, limb, and education for the sake of a hunch, but she was going to study for the exams that were actually, definitely, going to happen.

 

Except that Snape was going to steal the Philosopher's stone, so instead, she was going to follow her friends (her  _friends!_ ) into peril to keep them from killing themselves.

That failed, a little, because Ron was nearly smashed in life-size chess and Harry was almost killed by Voldemort-in-Quirrel when she was forced to leave him in the penultimate room, and then he was in the medical wing for days and she and Ron worried themselves sick over him.

He woke up, of course, and she hugged him until he complained of dying again, and if she cried, then only her pillow would tell anyone.

 

"Having friends is strange," she told her mama that summer, twining mama's braids into a crown on her head. "I like it, but it's so terrifying."

Her mama laughed. "That is love," she said, catching Hermione's wrist and kissing the pulse point. "It is the best thing you will ever feel, and it will terrify you for as long as you feel it."

Hermione wrinkled her nose. "I don't think I like that."

"It is something you learn to value," her mama said, "having a  _rafiki_ to lean on when you need one, no matter how much it hurts to let go of them."

 

In her second year of Hogwarts, Hermione looked into a mirror and was turned to stone by the basilisk hiding in the Chamber of Secrets under Hogwarts.

Honestly, she was really doubting whether this school was at  _all_ safe. Her mama certainly didn't think so, and almost refused to allow Hermione to go back the next year.

 

The next year, Sirius Black escaped Azkaban, Dementors stalked Hogwarts, and she got a time-turner. By the end of the year, her DADA professor turned out to be a werewolf, Ron's rat Peter Pettigrew and the traitor who turned the Potters over to Voldemort, and Sirius Black an innocent man who was also Harry's godfather. Also, she and Harry time-traveled to save both Buckbeak and Sirius.

"You are making things up," Hermione's father insisted, and Hermione sighed and said "I wish I was."

 

And it all got worse from there.

 

When Hermione was seventeen, she  _obliviated_ her parents and sent them to Australia. She cried when she sent her grandparents  _We're going on vacation, don't expect much correspondence - terrible signal_ from her father's phone. She cried harder on her way to the Weasleys', thinking of her parents wondering what the little room on their top floor was used for.

 

When Hermione was seventeen, everything went to hell.

 

Once she'd read that  _Hell is not a place, but a state of being,_ and standing in the reopened Chamber of Secrets with basilisk fangs in her arms and Ron warm at her side, she was starting to think that she might be passing into a different state of being.

Watching Neville draw the sword of Gryffindor and slice Nagini's head off only strengthened her conviction.

Harry screaming  _Expelliarmus_ and Voldemort finally, finally, falling made her absolutely certain, and so many people lay dead and the school was a wreck and so very much needed to be fixed, but she was allowed to share that burden, and she tucked her wand away and grabbed Ron's face and pulled him down into a kiss.

He tasted the same as she did: of ash and blood and sweat. His arms came up around her, thin but so very strong, and she shook: "It's over, 'Mione," he said softly, and she shook her head. "It's over," he repeated. "The war's done."

"We're not," she said, and he nodded. 

"No. We're not. But we're not alone, either."

And Ron's brother lay dead on the floor, but if he could be that strong, then Hermione, who had lost no one so permanently as that, could at least try to match him.

" _Nakupenda, mahabubu_ ," she murmured into his neck, and he kissed her unraveling braids like he knew what she'd said.

 

Her parents came home and Hermione undid her spell, and her mama screamed at her before they both broke down crying. All three of them sunk to the floor, her father shuddering and her mama sobbing, and Hermione shoved her tearstained smile into her mama's life-warm neck and whispered  _Nakupenda_ until her voice gave out.

 

When Hermione is nineteen, she visits her _bibi_ and _babu_ without her parents. Her _bibi_ tells her the story she'd told Hermione's mother decades earlier, about the man with purple eyes who entranced a young girl named Karabou; how they both disappeared for two years, and how the girl returned home with young twins and tales of magic and wands and destiny; how the younger twin, Khayone, married and had sons, and those sons married and had children, and on and on until Hermione's  _bibi_ married her  _babu_ and had Hermione's own mother.

"What was the wizard's name?" Hermione asks, and her  _bibi_ shrugs.

"He never said it."

 

When Hermione is nineteen, she gets her first tattoo.

It is a small ibis bird inked into the dip of her spine, pale wings tucked in and head tilted up in eternal curiosity. Ron kisses it and asks her what it means, and she tells him to find out for himself.

Her second tattoo hides underneath the bird in tiny, dark lettering: the name her mama has called her since birth, the one that's not on any records except the memories of Hermione and her parents.  _Kidege,_ emblazoned on her skin, and it took Ron two days to see it and ask her what it meant. "Ask my mama, _mhibu_ ," she smiled, and kissed the pout of his mouth.

 

Hermione gets her third tattoo shortly before she finds out she's pregnant. Ron's been kept busy on Auror business for the better part of the week and her dad's birthday is in twelve days, and Hermione needs something to quiet her mind.

She's found that the whir of the tattoo needle, the soft burn of the inking process, quiets her mind very well.

The small feather hides under her hair at the base of her neck, inked in the gold of her parents' tattoos and the ring Ron gave her two years ago. It's the feather of a dove, and the quill is made of tiny letters; if one squinted and perhaps used a magnifying glass, like the tattooist had done, they might see the charm commonly used to lift things into the air- things like trolls' clubs or down pillows.

Ron finds it that night, when he's rebraiding her hair. He stops, breath shuddering, and then he sweeps her around and they fall onto the bed together, and he is quick and warm, and Hermione is very glad she decided on that tattoo.

 

After her daughter is born and Hermione recovers from it, she and Ron go out together, their little girl held protectively in her father's arms.

They get the tattoo together, Hermione's fourth and Ron's first; petals the color of sunrise blooming across the left sides of their ribs, thorns blossoming into aster flowers. Rose Weasley, she will be called, and roses will be twined over her parents' bodies for as long as their bodies exist. Her second name is twined in among the petals, in the center of the bright roses and asters where a five-pointed star gleams: _Naledi,_ their precious star, their daughter. " _Nakupenda, malaika,_ " Hermione coos, rocking her baby girl as Ron drives them back home.

Their son comes two years later, and they do the same for him. Hugo _Ade_ Weasley, who takes his place on the right side of his parents' ribs: a golden crown twined in begonias, crocuses, larkspur, and gardenia, his name hidden among stems and vibrant blossoms. Rose pats at the bright colors on her mother's chest as she sits in her chair, nursing Hugo. "What do they mean, Mama?" Rose asks, and Hermione smiles.

 

By the time Hermione steps into office as Minister of Magic, she has acquired several more tattoos. She has an Impala lily etched in pink and white in the curve of her neck like a pendant, a golden lion outlined in scarlet in the bend of her left knee, a sprig of irises springing up from her right ankle, and a white chrysanthemum adorning the curve of her stomach. She makes her first speech with her head held high and her hair braided and pinned up into a crown by her husband, baring her declaration of love to anyone who cares to look at the back of her neck. 

She stands proud, mind clear and mouth sharp. When she steps up to the podium, between silence and speech, she thinks of a little girl sitting on a stool with a magic hat slipping down over her eyes and a voice saying  _You want to be like your mother, do you? Want to make her proud?_

Hermione Granger smiles.

She fought and survived in the second Wizarding War at Harry Potter's side. She married a Weasley- a kind, loyal Weasley- and got two beautiful, bright children out of the deal. She stands here, now, in a post sullied by the men who abused and corrupted it, ready to clean up their mess and make things better for everyone she can possibly help.

She thinks of Impala lilies and foxgloves, and spares a glance to the the band of intertwined gold lines inked into her wrist, her _arusi_ tattoo, the partner to the one normally hidden under Ron's Auror robes.

Yes, she thinks, and readies herself to speak. Yes, her mother is proud of her. And more than that, Hermione is proud of herself.

"Hello," she says into her wand, and sees a scrap of blue sky peeking through the heavy London clouds. Her voice reverberates, amplified by the spell, and she knows she's being recorded and filmed. She smiles once more. "I'm your new Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger."

**Author's Note:**

> Swahili translations:  
> kidege - little bird  
> bibi - grandmother  
> babu - grandfather  
> nakupenda - i love you  
> rafiki - friend  
> mahabubu - beloved  
> mhibu - dear one  
> malaika - angel  
> arusi - wedding
> 
> Flower meanings:  
> asters: star  
> begonias: deep thoughts  
> crocuses: foresight  
> larkspur: beautiful spirit  
> gardenias: joy  
> irises: wisdom, valor, honor  
> (white) chrysanthemum: fidelity, loyal love, truth, long life


End file.
